


Sentimental Rubbish

by Starlithorizon



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Everyone loves Sherlolly, F/M, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-11-30
Packaged: 2017-11-19 23:05:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/578601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starlithorizon/pseuds/Starlithorizon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was sentimental, emotional, a disadvantage, but that hardly mattered anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Someone suggested some Sherlolly in the comments of one of my earlier stories, and I was inspired. Because I love anything with people being nice to Molly, I guess. I just really love Molly, okay?

It was shortly after The Fall when it happened. It had a way of creeping and crawling about, hovering just at the edges of his peripheral vision, laughing quietly, but not silently. Oh, there was nothing silent about it. That was for sure.

It danced and laughed and slunk about as he lay on her sofa, fingers steepled under his chin in supplication to the higher power that was his brain. More often than not, it was a friend, rather than a foe. It provided the answers he wanted ( _needed_ ), allowed him to function properly (without the brain, the heart would not pump), and it gave him somewhere to retreat when it was needed. His brain was his most important thing. It was also his most constant thing. He could push it to his limits (sometimes a bit beyond), but it would be there when he came back, steadfast as ever.

However, his brain was not being cooperative at the moment.

He could see (most) of the answers he _needed_ , but not the one that he _wanted_.

 _What_  was that feeling haunting him so closely, so laughingly? There was something to it, a voice. No, a handful of voices. The words were different, but the sentiment was the same in all of them. It was a quiet thrumming against his fingertips, touching a pulse point. It was dilated eyes. It was the flick of cigarette ash against the antiseptic floor of a hospital.

_Caring is not an advantage._

_Sentiment is a chemical defect, found on the losing side._

_You machine!_

Under all that though, was another voice. A kinder one, made strong by necessity and certainty. The surest voice he had heard in a long while. Quiet, soft, rather like a gentle breeze brushing through tree branches, warm and easy and musical if you listened carefully.

He always listened carefully. It was part of the job description. And the voice whispering behind the fear and armour and bravado was a familiar one. It was a voice that sounded like beakers and microscopes and pipettes. Once, like lipstick and a black dress that was an innocent contrast to another pair of red lips hovering above a black dress.

_What do you need?_

And there, that was the problem. Molly Hooper, the woman who was so much braver and stronger than Sherlock had ever thought. It wasn't that he'd thought her a simpering, helpless damsel in distress, just that he'd never thought of her as a knight. Someone to be reckoned with, someone who could protect him. A bit like John in that respect.

Like John, she was fiercely loyal. He had been in her flat for two weeks, and the backlash was intense. The reports that he was a fraud became increasingly aggressive as supporters began to trickle in. The force of their attack, the depth with which they described his supposed falsehoods, everything was wearing even Sherlock down. Not Molly, though. Every night, as they watched the telly together, he sat in silence as she seethed quietly. She was more outraged at the media's ire than even he was. It was a fierce thing, her rage, burning like a bonfire only just contained.

How... _lovely_  that it should be for him.

He knew that, far away from Baker Street, a certain army doctor was too bereaved to do any proper raging. He also knew that, deep within those hallowed recesses of the Diogenes Club (hah!), his brother felt too much guilt and shame to direct his anger outwards. Perhaps Lestrade and Mrs Hudson were leading the charge in defense of his honor, but that almost didn't matter. What mattered was that, after all the muck that his name had been dragged through, she was _still there_.

He had treated her indifferently since day one, only amping up the charm to get what he needed. It was in the last few months, really, that things had changed. That he had seen her in a different light. He could trace this shift to the Christmas party, when she had spoken up.

The fire, banked and waiting, in her eyes two weeks ago. It lit him up, either igniting his own fire or setting him aflame. Really, though, he could hardly mind either way. There were worse ways to go than Molly's fire.

That's when it hit him, almost like a wellington boot to the face ( _that had been a good case_ ).

He was attracted to Molly Hooper.

Her steady, sure voice gained volume in his head till it drowned out the other, harsher words. Alone protected no one. Sentiment was simply a chemical compound, hardly a defect. Caring was not an advantage, but it _had_ advantages.

He was tempted for half a moment to delete the knowledge and the feeling, but he was assailed by an unbidden image of her face just three nights ago, smiling with her nose in a book, that nose crinkling just so slightly. The upturned curve of her lips had sparked something in his chest, causing it to expand and fill his throat. Her laugh did the same. Her voice when she said his name.

Sherlock Holmes had feelings for Molly Hooper. It was more than physical attraction (and let's be honest, it _was_ there). It had an emotional base, which, while it was typically something he disparaged, he could not bring himself to mind.


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And then it happened.

It was four hours after the realization that it happened. The dancing notion in his periphery had come into violently sharp focus, and now, he could see little else. He was a humming ball of nervous energy, which was patently absurd.

Sherlock Holmes, nervous?

Perish the thought!

(even if it was true)

When Molly came in through the door, tired and smelling of formaldehyde and the lingering notes of a floral perfume that somehow that somehow mixed nicely with the preserving chemical (maybe that was just him), he very nearly leapt to his feet and loomed over her, demanding explanations.

Give Sherlock Holmes four hours to dwell on something _emotional_ , and his eventual response will be to first demand answers, then to accuse.

The quiet, tired smile she gave him as she pulled her cardigan off stilled him. He was suddenly overwhelmed with the warmth currently filling his chest, expanding ever outward like a slow explosion.

"Hi," she said a bit wearily, but he read the weariness as a good one. It was a tiredness that settled easily into the grooves of one's bones, one that came from a job well done, a job enjoyed. He was certainly no stranger to it.

"Hello," he rumbled from his spot on the sofa. In uncharacteristic Sherlock fashion, he sat up and scooted to the side to give her room to simply flop down beside him. She sat close enough that her warmth radiated out, mingling with the heat coming off his own skin like light, casting the small space between them into incandescent brilliance. There was a subtle shift in the air, one that said that, for the first time, they were on the same page.

Well, reading the same book, at least.

Molly, who was delightfully intuitive, looked up at him, her eyes big and warm and shining with a day well spent. Sherlock, who was viciously well versed in people, looked down at her, eyes big and warm and glinting unsteadily with a shocking uncertainty.

The world tilted, just a little, throwing their gravity off. He tipped her way slightly, till his face was so close to hers, his lips so near hers, that he could see every freckle, every slight line, every colour in her eyes. Her breath swirled round his lips. He could feel their warmth, see the hand she held poised between their bodies like a shield (or a vise) in the edge of his vision.

"I—I don't know why, but you're important," he admitted, words more felt than heard as they danced so near to her mouth. "I meant what I said that day."

The words go unspoken now. There's no need for them. They are all three ingrained into everything, a luminescent thread connecting them and weaving through every single thing.

 _You've always counted_.

She licked her lips, nodded slightly, blinked.

Nothing changed, except the electricity crackling between them. That was new. That was new and different and exciting. If there was one person to be counted on to touch a live wire, it was none other than Sherlock Holmes.

Another tip of the world, and the distance closed. Warm lips against warm lips. Skin touching in a way that was unfamiliar for them. A whole new set of data, a whole new game to be played.

Except, if he was being very, very honest with himself, this wasn't a game at all. This was the realest thing he had ever known. It was like electricity, or maybe fire, or maybe summer rain rolling down his skin. It was the way her uncertain hand had fluttered against his chest and tangled itself in his shirt. It was in the way his hand came to find her waist like something he'd never known was special, but now felt sacred. It was in the way _he_  was the one to deepen the kiss, to move it from _experiment_ to _real life._ Molly Hooper was not his first kiss, but it certainly felt like it. Likely, hers was the first one to _matter_. It wasn't the first to make him want more, but the first to make him _need_  more.

When they drifted quietly apart, Molly dropping another small kiss on the tip of his nose ( _should find it cloying, but it's not unpleasant_ ), he gasped for breath. Because Molly's lips against his were like air in his lungs.

"You will always matter," he said slowly, carefully navigating the sneering voice that declared _sentimental rubbish_.

Molly kissed him again, and honestly, he never heard that voice again.


End file.
